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ROTARYDOWNUNDER.ORG | 15 |
to many, the idea of vaccination –
infecting one’s body with a sickness in
order to prevent that sickness – seemed
counterintuitive. And planting the
“bud ” from which immunity would
grow frequently meant accepting
a measure of risk and pain for a
greater good.
The zeitgeist these days is often
the opposite: to insulate, a word that
comes from the Latin for “island”.
That’s what many parents dream
of creating when they opt not to
vaccinate: an island where their child
is safe from harm.
Yet by foregoing vaccinations, they
are creating a different kind of island.
In the wealthy school districts of Los
Angeles, according to an investigation
by the Hollywood Reporter, as many
as 60 to 70 per cent of parents have
filed “personal belief exemptions” so
they won’t be required to vaccinate
their children. The rate of vaccination
in those schools is comparable to that
of Chad and South Sudan. And long-
forgotten diseases such as measles are
re-emerging.
Many anti-vaccination advocates
argue that immunisation is a personal
choice that affects only them. But
this decision affects our entire society.
This is because of a phenomenon
called “herd immunity”, which means
that each additional person who is
vaccinated decreases the ability of a
virus to spread. At a certain threshold,
the virus can’t find enough hosts
to move through a population. In
the best case, it goes extinct. That’s
what happened with smallpox, and
that’s what Rotary is working toward
with the polio eradication campaign.
Without vaccination, many people
can contract a disease – sometimes
without showing any symptoms – and
then carry it to others who cannot be
vaccinated because they are too young
or too ill.
Eula Biss is an essayist who had a son
in the early 2000s and heard the same
sort of rumours my wife and I did. She
did some deep research before coming
down on the side of vaccination.
But she remained fascinated by the
cultural currents stirred up by the topic
and her investigations resulted in her
book, On Immunity: An Inoculation.
In it, she notes: “Immunity is a public
space. And it can be occupied by those
who choose not to carry immunity”.
The ultimate effect is to endanger the
most vulnerable members of society.
Past waves of anti-vaccine
movements flourished when little was
known about viruses and how they
spread. And while today’s movement
has some aspects in common with
its predecessors, Biss feels there is
something different about it too –
namely that it stems from a sense of
powerlessness in the face of unseen
toxins and pollutants and evils.
“What has been done to us,” she
writes, “is that we have been made
fearful. What will we do with
our fear? This strikes me
as a central question
of both citizenship
and motherhood. As
mothers, we must
somehow square
our power with
our powerlessness.
We can protect our
children to some
extent. But we cannot
make them invulnerable
any more than we
can make ourselves
invulnerable.”
But if we have
gained some
fears, we have
lost others.
It’s been a
long time
since we
dealt with
the reality
of measles
or rubella
or smallpox.
It’s been a
long time
since we lived
as hunter-
gatherers
whose child mortality rate was 100
times the one we currently enjoy in
the United States. It’s been a long
time since we couldn’t just assume our
child would live.
Perhaps it’s time to bring vaccination
back from the personal into the public
sphere. To ask who we are vaccinating
for: For the young. For the old. For
those weaker than ourselves. For those
in future generations. For everyone.
When the question is framed this
way, researchers find that people are
more likely to choose vaccination.
And this is as it should be, because
vaccination is not a personal decision,
such as what we want to eat or what
we want to wear. Vaccination is not
a lifestyle choice. Vaccination is not
simply an individual matter. Because
no matter what kind
of island we feel
we are on, we
are on it
together. 